


speaks in the rolling thunder

by procellous



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning, F/M, Gen, Ironborn Culture and Customs, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 07:15:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20653274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procellous/pseuds/procellous
Summary: In the dark of the night, Theon comforts his son.





	speaks in the rolling thunder

**Author's Note:**

> Finally, a Theonsa Week story where Theon and Sansa actually show up! 
> 
> Theon's surprise bastard coming to Winterfell is [Ginny's](https://gingersprites.tumblr.com/) idea, who was kind enough to give me permission to borrow it.

The soft footfalls seemed impossibly loud in the silent room. His heartbeat thumped in his ears, too-loud, pounding like a fist against his ribs. What was he doing in a bed? He wasn’t allowed in a bed, Master would be angry—

_No_. No, he was Theon Greyjoy; he had no master. Ramsay was dead, bones and less than bones, an unpleasant memory and nothing more, and Theon was alive. Two men died in the dungeons; one of them rose again, harder and stronger, and one of them stayed down. 

He was Theon Greyjoy, and he was in bed with his love, his queen, and he would sooner die than let someone hurt her—and there was someone in the room with them, he could hear their shuffling footsteps and their uneven breathing. His hand closed around the sharp knife he kept under his pillow. 

Sansa’s hand rested on his arm, only barely there, but holding him back even so.

“Eirik,” she said, as much for Theon’s benefit as anything else, “what’s wrong?”

“I had a nightmare,” Eirik said, voice shaking.

Theon let go of the knife, and Sansa let go of his arm. He gave her hand a quick squeeze of thanks under the furs. 

Winterfell and its walls protected them from wind and cold; Brienne and her guards protected them from assassins and knives in the dark; Theon himself protected his queen from the ghosts that knew nothing of walls or guards—but it was Sansa that protected Theon from himself, from the demons that lurked out of the corners of his eyes, in the edges of his vision. 

When Eirik had first come to Winterfell, Theon had made Brienne and Sansa promise that if he ever did anything to hurt the boy, they would take his head for it. Bad enough that Sansa was trusting a child to the care of a child-killer and turncloak; he had needed the assurance that he wouldn’t live to repeat his mistakes. Brienne had argued, Sansa had gone very pale and quiet, but he had insisted, practically begging, and in the end they had promised—and Sansa had promised that she would keep it from becoming necessary. 

“Do you want to tell us about it?”

Theon could hear his son’s soft footfalls on the stone floor, growing closer; could see his nod in the flash of faint light in his hair. Sansa shifted, the bed dipping with her weight, and settled Eirik in the bed between them. 

“I was floating in the dark and there was nothing anywhere else in the whole world, just dark and cold, and I tried to move but I couldn’t, and when I opened my mouth to scream the darkness flooded in and I couldn’t _breathe_.” Eirik sobbed for air. “The darkness was in my mouth and my throat and my lungs and I was choking on it and then I woke up but it was still really dark and I…I didn’t want to be alone.” His voice was small and shaking. 

“You were drowning,” Theon said, a little stunned. He hadn’t thought about that nightmare in years, but he’d had the same dream when he was not much younger than Eirik, just before the rebellion started. He’d gone to his mother for comfort that night, knowing that anyone else in Pyke would just cuff him for going to them with his child-fears—though when he and Yara shared a cabin and sometimes a bed so that he didn’t wake all her crew with his screaming, he’d learned that she’d had the same nightmare as a child. He wouldn’t have thought that Eirik would have the same dream, growing up so far from the sea. 

There was iron and salt in the boy’s blood, the same as in Theon’s. 

He still wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that—about another Ironborn boy raised within the walls of Winterfell, far from the sea—but at least Eirik wasn’t alone in it. 

“Eirik,” he said, trying to remember what his mother had told him that long-ago night, “do you know what’s at the very bottom of the ocean?”

“Sand?” Eirik guessed. 

Theon bit back a smile. “Deep down, down below all the ships and fish, are the halls of the Drowned God, where our ancestors feast forever.”

It was too dark to see Eirik’s expression as he turned the thought over and over in his mind, but Theon could bring it to mind easily: chewing his lip, his brow furrowed, his small round face screwed up in concentration. It made him look like Robb, a thought that ached every time. Despite the two of them sharing no blood and having never met, that expression was an exact mirror of Robb’s. 

He wasn’t sure if whatever gods were responsible for that twist of fate were cruel or kind. 

“Do you know, Eirik, I had the same nightmare?”

“Really?”

“Only twice. I was a little younger than you, the first time, but the second time…it was the night before Sansa and I escaped.”

“Did I know about that?” Sansa mumbled, clearly half-asleep. 

“Not unless Yara told you, and I don’t think she would. Eirik, that dream is a blessing from the Drowned God, marking you as one of his people. There’s nothing to be afraid of in the ocean, not for us. Not even drowning. The ocean is where our family and our god are.”

“Ours,” Eirik repeated, thoughtfully. Sometimes Theon wondered where the boy had gotten that trait—none of Theon’s family were prone to careful consideration. He had probably gotten it from Sansa, honestly, or his mother. “Does that mean—my mother—”

_Oh,_ Theon thought._ Of course._ “Your mother,” he began, and hesitated. “Your mother is with her gods, not in the deep,” he said, finally. There were few enough times when he thought of Eirik’s mother, and fewer still the times when he wished to have remembered her a little better, if only so that he could be a better father for Eirik. 

“But you’ll be there?”

“Of course.” He dared to lay a hand around Eirik’s shoulders in a half-hug. “Of course I will. Where else would I go?”

Eirik burrowed close to Theon’s chest, a small warm weight against him. “Do you promise?”

“I promise. I'll be there in the darkness with you."


End file.
